by Sarah Zettel
“Only one way to make sure it doesn’t come to that.” She stood up and strode out the door.
Hours later, Al Shei forced herself back into her cabin. There hadn’t been any more system failures, but there hadn’t been any progress toward finding the cause of their troubles either. She prayed long and intensely, reaching for a peace that didn’t come, made her day book recording and, at last, lay down on her bunk beneath her emerald green coverlet.
Al Shei lay on her side and listened to the soft hum of the ship around her. Usually, it lulled her. It was the sound of everything behaving as it should. Not tonight. Tonight, the gentle sound was a disguise, covering up an unseen problem. Pasadena was haunted tonight, and she had no idea how to draw the ghost out.
Al Shei rolled onto her back and threw her arm across her face, pressing her eyelids shut. She let herself imagine Asil lay beside her. She conjured up the memory of his scent, the heat of his body, the sweet sensation of his arms around her, loosely embracing her in sleep. She felt his warm, comforting weight against her as her breast rose and fell in long, contented breaths. His lips brushed lightly against her cheeks as he pulled her closer in his dreams.
Dreaming of her husband’s dreams, Al Shei managed to fall asleep.
Chapter Four — More Questions
Yerusha lay in her bunk staring up at darkness. She was supposed to be getting her seven and a half hour sleep shift in, but it wasn’t working out that way.
It was ridiculous. It was triple-fractured and double-twisted ridiculous. The entire crew was running itself ragged to find a virus that the stack in her case could locate in ten seconds.
They were all so scared. They relied on human engineering for their shelter, their air, their warmth and their flight, but they wouldn’t let their shelter be guided by an engineered mind, a native of an environment where even Lipinski was just a visitor. Even if her foster hadn’t caught a soul yet, it was a diagnostician that was ten thousand times faster than Lipinski could ever be.
While they all scrabbled around, the walls were crawling with who-knew-what. Yerusha shifted restlessly, wrinkling the sheet underneath her. Hadn’t anybody thought that it might get into the environmental controls? Or the fuel containment system? The vents were electronic and could be opened by a faulty command. Then what? They’d still have their groundhog security, but they’d be quite dead.
And her with them.
Yerusha sat up. “Lights.” The white glow she’d set to match the lights on Free Home Titania flooded the room. She kicked back the blanket and swung her feet onto the floor. She padded over to the storage drawers and unlocked the compartment that held her toolbelt. She extracted her pen from its pocket and thumbed the activation switch. Then, she held it against the lock for the lowest drawer. The drawer beeped once in acknowledgement and slid open. Yerusha extracted a grey metal case about ten centimeters on a side and six centimeters thick. Inside, snug and secure lay her foster’s wafer stack.
Foster was her last link to the Free Home until her exile was over. It was the only Freer voice she would hear, the only friend she did not lose. Right now, it was also the only help she had.
She looked towards the folded-up desk. No good. Lipinski, no matter what Al Shei said, would probably still be watching her lines. Besides, she squeezed the case, what she had said to Al Shei was the truth. Even though current theory said a fledgling intelligence needed as much input as possible, she had no intention of hatching her foster aboard the Pasadena, while the Houston’s reaction was going to be to hunt it down and kill it.
Even the best Houston, however, could not be everywhere at once. Some lines would be given priority over others.
Yerusha pulled her work clothes on over her pajamas and tucked her foster into one deep pocket. Then, she cycled open her hatch and headed for the bridge.
Cheney was the only one on the bridge when Yerusha got there. That meant Tulsa, Cheney’s relief, was out on what Al Shei was calling “the Hunt.” Schyler was nominally on sleep shift, but, somehow, Yerusha doubted he would be having any more luck with it than she did.
Cheney paced between Station One and Station Two, peering at the boards and scribbling ones on the memory pads.
He jerked his head around as Yerusha let the hatch cycle shut.
“Any trouble?” she asked, coming forward to peer over his shoulder.
“You mean, any new trouble?” Cheney corrected her. “Not yet.” He wrote down the new coherency reading for the system diagnostic. “But no new answers either.” He brooded for a moment at the curving, silver wall that was the only thing visible through the window. Then, he spared her a glance. “Aren’t you on Z-duty?”
She shrugged. “No luck on that assignment. Thought I’d come up and run a couple of simulations, see if I can work up a pattern on this mess.”
Cheney gave her a sour smile. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” she answered in what she hoped was a suitably wry tone.
The chair for the virtual reality station looked more like an exo-skeleton forced into a sitting position than like a chair. Yerusha settled herself at the VR station, tucking her feet into the boots that were attached to the floor rests. Keeping her back between Cheney and the boards, she pulled her foster’s case out of her pocket. She removed the delicate stack and inserted it into one of the board’s empty slots. Behind her, she could hear Cheney rustling and scribbling without interruption.
She pulled her pen out and wrote Activate port 37C on the board, but did not put down a period to finish the sentence and send the command. She laid the pen on top of the board, right next to the socket holding her foster.
She strapped her torso to the chair, closed the chair’s flexible arms around her arms and slid the wired gloves onto her hands. Then, she lowered the muffling helmet over her head. VR sets worked perfectly well with goggles and earphones, but most ships still used the helmets to keep any conversations in virtual reality from interfering with the bridge routine.
The helmet clicked into place and a menu board glowed bright white and green in the surrounding darkness. The menu displayed three selections for her:
ENTER PROGRAM NAME
DISPLAY PROGRAM MENUS
ENTER NEW PARAMETERS
Yerusha touched ENTER NEW PARAMETERS. A memory board with a pen clipped to the top appeared. Yerusha picked up the pen, twirled it thoughtfully in her fingers for a moment and started writing.
Initiate Pasadena simulation, current conditions, continuous update, delete crew.
She tapped down a period and waited. Some systems would not accept a continuous update command because it used up too much line space.
Pasadena, however, just came back with; SPECIFY STATION FOR POINT OF REFERENCE.
Bridge VR Station One, she wrote.
The darkness lifted and Yerusha was seated at the VR station, alone on the bridge. The slot where, on the real bridge, her foster was plugged in was empty, however. The stack was inactive and the ship’s system carried no record of it, so as far as the simulation was concerned, it did not exist.
Now came the part that was a little tricky. Yerusha closed her eyes and gripped what her left hand told her was the tip of her right index finger. She pulled. She repeated the motion for each finger, tugging at skin and finger ends until she peeled off the VR glove. She did not open her eyes, because if she did, she would see her right hand cut off at the wrist and lying in her lap. She did not have time to be disconcerted. If Cheney picked now to check up on her, things were going to get awkward, fast.
With her right hand, Yerusha groped across the real board until her fingers closed around her pen. She fumbled with it until she held it the right way up. She stabbed a period down on the board.
She could not risk an interface between the ship’s system and her foster without the cover of the simulation. The sudden increase in activity would be too noticeable and she had been directly ordered to keep it in its case. Now, however, the relatively small increase in power co
nsumption and line usage under the myriad commands of a constantly updated program would be barely detectable.
She opened her eyes.
Her right hand was lying limp and lifeless across her thigh. She picked it up and slid it back onto the end of her wrist, twisting it around until she could wiggle all her fingers.
In her ear, a voice whispered “I’m here, Jemina.”
“Hello, Foster.” The foster was not independent yet. If and when it became complex enough to catch a soul, it would be encouraged to choose a name. For now, though, it was just “Foster.”
The fostering program had been going on for twenty years and had yet to see any successes. Nonetheless, the sporadic appearances of rogue AIs reinforced the Freer’s faith, and there were always more applicants for the adoption lottery than there were AIs to be fostered.
Humanity’s freedom came when they were able to shake off the chaotic planetary environment they were born into and make their own homes designed specifically for them. Their final freedom would come when they could break the cycle of death that chaotic ecosystem had trapped them in, when human beings could build houses for human souls that would not age and perish. That was the Freer ideal, and Yerusha believed in it.
“What is happening?” asked Foster. “Am I being hatched?”
“No, not yet.” Not for awhile yet, either, I’m afraid. She could not let Foster go out of its own stack until she had a secure environment for it. That would not happen until she was back on a Freer station.
Foster didn’t ask any more questions, like a flesh-and-blood child would have. As usual, Yerusha found its inability to display impatience or undue curiosity a mixed blessing.
“I need your help, Foster. The ship is having severe system trouble. I need you to scan the input from the simulation and see if you can establish a pattern for the disruptions.”
“An accurate simulation cannot be created when the root causes for observed effects are unidentified,” answered Foster, sounding way too programmed.
Need to work on the grammar structure paths. “I know, but we’ve got a constant update going so you should have an accurate picture of the symptoms. We don’t need an exact answer. A best guess cause and effect relationship will do for now.”
“Okay,” said Foster. “Setting up scan routine.”
“Be careful of the security protocols,” Yerusha reminded it. “Don’t trip over any of Houston’s wires.”
“Noted. Precautions being integrated. Predicted time to initial report, thirty seconds.”
Definitely have to work on those grammar paths. Not half enough flexibility in there.
Yerusha settled back to wait. The predicted thirty seconds passed, and thirty more, and thirty more.
Yerusha drummed her fingers impatiently on the virtual chair arm.
“Foster? What’s going on?”
There was no answer.
“Foster?” Yerusha gripped both arms of the chair and leaned forward.
There was no answer.
Yerusha snatched up the pen. Status of module in port 37C, she wrote. Real world interface.
The board absorbed her command and wrote out its answer.
MODULE IN PORT 37C IS INOPERATIVE.
“Ino…” the word died on Yerusha’s lips.
She slammed the heels of both hands against her temples to cut off the simulation and raise the helmet. In an instant, the world went black and she felt the helmet begin to rise. As soon as she saw the thin line of outside light, she ducked under the helmet’s edge and tore off the gloves. She pushed the chair arms away from her. With a shaking hand, she removed Foster’s stack from the port. She laid it back in the case and bit her lip as she pressed the diagnosis key. Two words appeared on the edge of the small message board inside the case’s lid:
STACK EMPTY.
A small, involuntary sound escaped Yerusha’s throat. She tried to stand, but the skeleton’s straps and boots forced her back down. Viciously, she slapped the catches open.
“Are you okay ?” asked Cheney.
Yerusha couldn’t even begin to think of a way to answer him. Cradling Foster’s case in both hands, she ran for the hatch.
What happened? What happened? She pounded down the stairs to the berthing deck. She was aware of an exclamation from an engineering platform, but she didn’t know who it was.
Did Foster get loose? Did it hatch? Fractured and damn, Lipinski will kill it! Did the virus get it? She lunged into the corridor. Did I open it up to die?
What happened?
Hands grabbed her shoulders, jerking her backwards. Yerusha stumbled into a cabin, barely catching herself against a bunk before she over-balanced. A hatch cycled shut behind her. Yerusha forced her eyes to focus, and she saw a window looking out onto rolling, mist-covered hills.
“Jemina Yerusha,” said Dobbs from behind her. “What have you done?”
There was such a note of command in her voice, Yerusha almost answered.
She ran her hand through her hair.
“Nothing,” she managed to say. “I was just running some simulations on the bridge. Overdid things. I should be asleep…”
Dobbs sighed. “I really wish you’d tell me what’s going on, because I know you don’t want to have to tell Schyler, or Al Shei, and possibly Lipinski, if you live through telling the first two.”
Yerusha swallowed hard and looked down at the case in her hands. “I was using my foster to scan some data simulations. It…stopped responding after the first thirty seconds. The case diagnostic said the stack was empty.”
Dobbs stepped into her line of sight. The Fool’s forehead was wrinkled in perplexity. “It got loose?”
Yerusha shrugged helplessly. “It shouldn’t have left the stack, it was scanning input. I don’t think it could get loose, it hasn’t got any independent initiative…” She felt herself begin to sway on her feet. “I don’t know…I was trying…”
“To prove the worth of humanity’s ultimate efforts to a shipload of groundhuggers,” Dobbs said for her. Dobbs hooked two of her fingers around her Guild necklace. “And I should have seen it coming.”
“That’s not it,” insisted Yerusha, although she didn’t know why. “I…”
“Sit down, Pilot.” Dobbs lifted the case out of her hands. Yerusha clutched at it. That was Foster, her last link with home, the thing she was counting on to keep her focused for the two years when no other Freer would even talk to her.
“I’m not going to hurt it,” said Dobbs softly. “Sit down before you fall down.”
Yerusha sat on the edge of the scarlet-covered bunk. It was fully made up, she realized. Whatever Dobbs had been doing this shift, it wasn’t sleeping.
Dobbs set Foster’s case on the corner of her desk. She opened a drawer and poured something out of a square, green bottle into a collapsible cup.
“Here. Sip this.” She handed the cup to Yerusha.
Yerusha sipped. The liquid was pale brown, smokey flavored and very alcoholic.
“For medicinal purposes.” Dobbs grinned at her, indicating that the comment must be a joke.
Yerusha took another sip. The liquid felt warm against her dry throat.
Dobbs pulled her pen out of the desk socket. “Is the stack secured?” she asked as she flipped open the case’s lid.
“Not now.” Yerusha shook her head. “I didn’t think…”
She half-expected Dobbs to say “obviously not,” but the Fool just nodded and plugged her pen into the case.
“What are you doing?” Yerusha started to her feet.
“I’m trying to see if there’s enough left in here to get a recording of what happened.” The light on the end of her pen glowed gold. Dobbs plucked the pen out of the case and stuck it back into her desk. She watched silently as the desk wrote out its response.
“Well,” Dobbs fingered her necklace. “Nothing got out. Something did get in though.”
Yerusha set the cup gently down on the bed.
“If Lipin
ski…” she began.
“No,” said Dobbs. “The stack’s been entirely re-configured. There’s not an ordered pathway left in here. There is no way Lipinski could have wiped a stack this clean that fast, and no reason why he would. He would’ve just hauled Al Shei and Schyler up to the bridge and caught you in the act.”
“Then it was the virus.”
Dobbs gave one of her showiest shrugs. “It’s either that or the Pasadena’s gone independent and doesn’t like people poking in its innards.”
“But Foster is gone.”
Dobbs nodded. “I think so. I think it was an effect similar to what happened to that initial diagnostic Lipinski tried to run.”
Yerusha focused her eyes on the empty stack. She felt drained, exhausted, and alone. For the first time since she left Port Oberon, she was really alone without hope or help for two dark, wandering years. Worse, her chance at redemption was gone.
She realized she was about to start crying. She screwed her emotions up into a tight ball and forced them down inside her. Not in front of an outsider, not even a Fool. No. She would mourn her losses alone in her cabin, not here. Not ever where it could be seen by somebody who couldn’t possibly understand. She did not want to try to tell Dobbs that those pathways had matched Holden’s neural pathways as closely as possible, or how much she had paid to get them that way. She did not want to attempt to explain her hope that the soul Foster would catch would be Holden’s.
“So,” she said, trying desperately to find something her mind could latch onto other than the dead and empty stack on the desk. “You were a cracker before you were a Fool?” she nodded towards Dobbs’ pen. “Whatever you just ran must have taken a year to build.”
Dobbs smiled, looking uncharacteristically bashful. “I was a lot of things before I was a Fool.”
“You don’t look anything like old enough.” Yerusha dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. “But, so help me, neither do I, yet.”
“Go back to your cabin, Yerusha,” suggested Dobbs. “Get some sleep if you can. You’re going to need your head together to get this crew of groundhogs to The Farther Kingdom.”